The latest boss of Jay Z’s floundering music streaming service Tidal has already washed out.
Tidal’s interim CEO Peter Tonstad stepped in after the company ditched former CEO Andy Chen in April, but he just left the company. Executives in Oslo and New York will run Tidal until a replacement is found. “The only thing I can confirm is that I have resigned,” Tonstad told Norwegian news site Dagens Næringsliv.
This revolving door of executives isn’t surprising, considering what a shitwave Tidal is riding. Tidal still has less than a million subscribers, peanuts compared to Spotify’s 20 million. One of its selling points is fairer pay for artists, but Tidal tried to get that point across by assembling a coterie of obscenely wealthy celebrities congratulating each other and basking in the warmth of their wealth-farts during its launch.
Despite relaunching in the spring, Jay Z hasn’t been able to convince people that the higher pay for all artists is worth the higher price point and mediocre user experience.
If its biggest shakeups continue to be revolving personnel, there’s reasonable doubt that Tidal will catch up to its competition, especially since Apple just launched its new streaming music service (and made nice with Taylor Swift).
